(probably not what our panel will look like)

If you're going to be at BookExpo America for the educational programs on Wednesday, May 28, or if you just want to take a break from setting up your booth, I'll be participating in a panel on "Strategies for New Publicity Opportunities in an Expanding Media Universe" at 2:30 p.m. According to the official description, we'll be asking—or you'll be asking and we'll be answering:

"How do publicists and marketers balance traditional campaign efforts, budget resources and time, and find and validate smaller web communities? In an environment where everyone is—quite literally—a critic, are trusted review publications more or less influential?"

Or, as I've been joking to people over the last week, "book trailers and blog tours: do they do any good?" Fortunately, moderator Jerome Kramer of Rosetta Solutions will come up with smarter things to talk about, and John Pitts and Matt Baldacci, the directors of marketing at Doubleday and St. Martin's, respectively, will have substantial insights into how publishers are tackling a media landscape where facing five minutes of mock hostility on Comedy Central can do more good for a nonfiction writer than an ideologically sympathetic magazine review.

For more information on the full range of panel discussions taking place that day, check the BookExpo calendar.

Friday night, Amanda ReCupido swung by the Instituto Cervantes for a special PEN World Voices screening of Wristcutters, a film based on Etgar Keret's short story,"Kneller's Happy Campers."

"The film centers on a comically dark and bizarre afterlife reserved for suicides where everyone bears the scars earned from the manner in which they 'offed' themselves," Amanda reports. "Keret, who spoke at the end of the screening, mentioned that he used Don Quixote as a model for his surreal story, which he describes as a 'picaresque romance.' He admitted that the film's happy ending concerned him at first (his short story ends differently), and, in fact, the director shot both endings, but ultimately, the uplifting version 'cinematically is a better end,' he said.

"Keret also spoke about how his work is affected by his Israeli background; indeed, much of the geography in the film resembles the desolate Israel terrain. When asked about the story's existential theme, Keret responded, 'It's difficult living in Israel and not being existential,' explaining how even an activity as simple as going for a cup of coffee could raise existential issues. 'But despite it all, I describe myself as an incurable optimist.' And when asked about why it is that so many of his short stories are adapted into film: 'I usually have one setting and not many characters,' he explained. 'My stories are perfect for lazy film students.'

Longtime GalleyCat readers will recognize Amanda ReCupido as this blog's roving correspondent, who's sent in field reports (and photographs) from some of the parties and lectures that I (now we) weren't able to attend, like last month's launch party for Sex and Sensibility, a collection of cartoons by women associated with The New Yorker, edited by Liza Donnelly.

Amanda recently took on a new gig with the Breakup Girl website, blogging about relationship-themed news stories, and in one of her first posts, she revisits Donnelly and the gang for an evening at the Algonquin Hotel's library room, where "much of the group's discussion actually centered on whether or not men and women find different things funny, and why that might be." On her own blog, Donnelly debunks the breathless Page Six write-up, and also posts the picture above, where she's joined by Carolita Johnson, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Victoria Roberts, and Barbara Smaller.

Amanda also reports that Donnelly and her husband, cartoonist Michael Maslin, are collaborating on a book about marriage. That should prove entertaining...

clockwise: Irakli Kakabadze, Hasan Elahi, Chenjerai Hove

Last night, Amanda ReCupido dropped by Joe's Pub to listen in on "Something to Hide: Writers and Artists Against the Surveillance State," a PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature event. "The reading was designed to provoke reflection on the controversial post-9/11 programs in the U.S. (like the fact that the government can probably see this post RIGHT NOW AS I'M TYPING IT)," Amanda emailed, "and the works chosen focused on the ways in which government surveillance threatens artistic and intellectual freedom."

"Each of the evening's writers had their own personal encounters with surveillance. Artist Hasan Elahi, who was placed on the terrorist suspect list, found a way to turn his experience into art. 'The FBI couldn't formally clear me since I had never been formally charged,' he explained. 'So if I needed to travel, I would call my FBI agent and let him know where I was going.' The phone calls turned into emails, turned into emails accompanied by pictures, and finally, he transformed his phone into a tracking device, so that they could see where he was at all times. So far he has collected over 35,000 images. 'It's fine by me if they want to know where I am,' he said as a portion of his images scrolled behind him. 'But then I'm going to tell them everything.'

"Also interesting was new media artist Jenny Marketou's reading of Andy Warhol's surveillance files from the late 60s while he was filming a porn video. Some of my favorite observations were that 'all the men looked like hippies' and that Warhol was 'acting like a big sissy,' but the suggestion that the film needed 'more character development' definitely takes the cake."

I'm told that the "On Page & Screen" panel I moderated Sunday morning at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books went well; Tina Dupuy of FishbowlLA gave it a friendly write-up, and from my perspective at the far end of the table, I think she pegs some of what I consider the best parts of the hour: entertaining anecdotes from from veteran TV producer Gary David Goldberg, the passion with which Mark Frost talked about using golf as a platform for discussing human character, the openness with which Animal House co-scripter Chris Miller conceded the difficulties in trying to write a memoir about his real college years ("I tried my best to tell it like it happened, but I was really hammered"), and Tom Epperson's stories about shifting from screenplays to a novel, The Kind One, which he's now turning into a screenplay—and realizing that he'll have to cut huge chunks of the story to get the film under two hours. And, as Tina reports, Epperson was also very kind when it came to eventually correcting the extra screenwriting credit I gave him during the introduction.

Speaking of that memoir comment: I had brought up the subject of "Margaret B. Jones" because it seemed particularly relevant to the subject of memoir, especially Miller's artistic decision to switch to an omniscient third person narrator about one-third of the way into the story. (As he put it, when he got involved with the fraternity, he became part of an organism, and his story was caught up in the stories of all the others.) But, as Tina notes, the Jones issue was popping up in discussions all over the Festival—including at least one fiction panel where it seemed more than a little forced.

(Thanks to Nancy Mills for taking this picture of Miller, me, Epperson, and Frost as we were getting ready to head over to our auditorium once we found Goldberg—who turned out to be around a hallway corner just ten feet away.)

Just a quick reminder that PEN World Voices starts its six-day festivities tonight with, among other events, Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Lévy talking about the situation in Darfur at the prompting of Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning novelist Dinaw Mengestu. There's also a suite of short films inspired by writers like Sylvia Plath, Paul Bowles, and Gertrude Stein, with a live appearance by John Giorno, the subject of the documentary Nine Poems in Basilicata. GalleyCat's occasional remote correspondent, Amanda ReCupido, will be attending several of this week's events, and I'm looking forward to her coverage!

The second event in the Beatrice.com reading series at the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction is taking place Wednesday night, and the lineup includes two writers whose latest novels have recently been released in paperback. Arthur Phillips will be reading from his third novel, Angelica, while Paulina Porizkova shares an excerpt from A Model Summer, her debut novel. I'll be doing my usual introductory remarks, and we'll have wine and cheese and books for sale afterwards.

Even with the competition from PEN World Voices and various other literary events around town, I'm hoping for a good-sized audience for this reading (which starts at 7 p.m.). I hope you can make it!

Remember the brouhaha back in January over the two books both named Saucier's Apprentice? Raymond Sokolov, who wrote his back in 1976, is going to be talking about nouvelle cuisine at an Astor Center lecture tonight, and apparently his discussion is going to be augmented by samples from two terrines based on recipes by leading chefs of the period. (Also, this being the Astor Center, wine will be served.) Some tickets are still available—if you're into terrines, it sounds like it could be pretty fun.

Independent Book Publicist Joan Schulhafer just furnished me with this report from the RT Booklovers Convention this past weekend along with the photo of Jackson and Dickey.

Their biggest attendance ever; rumored to be 1100 registrants, not counting staff. Seemingly all of them - plus many readers from the local area - converged upon the Hilton Hotel ballroom at 11:00 on Saturday morning armed with vintage novels for signatures and ready to buy, buy, buy (from bookseller - Joseph Beth) and they did. People everywhere standing in line for favorite authors such as Christine Feehan, Lisa Jackson, J.R. Ward and Heather Graham among others. By near closing time the crowds in the ballroom had thinned, but not enough to quell panic among a number of attendees when the lights went out and the room went black. They came back on not too long afterward, but the question guests are asking Hilton is not why the lights went out, but why the emergency exit lights did not go on. However no one in the crowd of mostly women readers uttered a word of complaint about being trapped in the dark with the many "studly" young men preparing to compete in the evening's Mr. Romance pageant.

Bloggers Sarah Wendell (Smart Bitches (heart) Trashy Books) and Publishers Weekly's Barbara Vey (Beyond the Book ) were prominent among internet media covering the event and have been reporting on the action all weekend.

Barbara Vey was doing "Drive by Videos" of authors and others and they've been being posted on Publishers Weekly along with her notes.

One of the most intriguing pairings, and one of the panels that caused the most buzz, was on "writing the bestseller" with Lisa Jackson (Lost Souls) and Eric Jerome Dickey (Waking with Enemies) both still touring for their new novels-not surprising since both are known to readers who have attended previous signings and panels as writers whose humorous delivery and lack of hubris enliven every appearance.

More after the jump including The Fabio Incident and Mr Romance 2008

continued...

Remember last summer, when Marianne Mancusi and Liz Maverick scandalized fellow romance writers with their attire at the Romance Writers of America convention? Well, the self-titled Rebels of Romance" are videoblogging from this week's Romantic Times convention in Pittsburgh... Here's some highlights from the first day of festivities.